


Under the Night Sky

by thinlizzy2



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon AU - Project Insight Successfully Launched, Captain America: The Winter Soldier Spoilers, F/M, Ignores Elements of AoU, Outdoor Sex, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-27
Updated: 2015-06-27
Packaged: 2018-04-04 19:48:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4150572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thinlizzy2/pseuds/thinlizzy2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a world where Project Insight was a success and Hydra is thriving, Clint and Natasha reunite.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Under the Night Sky

**Author's Note:**

  * For [plinys](https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/gifts).



> Written for plinys for MCU AU Round 2. Plinys, I think I abandoned three stories before I remembered that you like super clichéd max romance for these two. That's just how I like them too! After that, I had a lot of fun! Hope you enjoy the results.

It doesn’t make sense that the world has fallen apart all around them – is still shattering, in fact, all the time - and yet, in this particular moment, Natasha feels no unhappiness. In the middle of all the loss, all the violence, all the needless death, she feels so ridiculously good. Or even more than good, since as the seconds stretch into minutes, and the minutes become long, luxurious hours, Natasha Romanov is bizarrely, blissfully, happy. 

The sensation is unfamiliar, but instantly recognizable nonetheless.

It’s not that she’s forgotten the world around them, the world that she swore she would protect and that she so spectacularly failed. She may be a trained assassin and an experienced killer, but she’s nowhere near cold enough to forget the millions that died when Project Insight launched, the very best in humanity wiped away with a word from the very worst. And she is far too devoted to her role as an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. to pretend that the organization to which she once wholeheartedly committed her life isn’t in tatters. S.H.I.E.L.D. was supposed to save her, redeem her, wash the blood off her hands, and now it's spoiled, rotted from the head down and the heart out. It’s all still true and it all still matters.

But other things matter more.

Tonight, it is possible that the most important thing is that Clint survived the nightmarish purge despite having been half a world away from Natasha and cut off from the strict structure of command that he knew and trusted when it happened. Or maybe the most important thing is that the bastards that murdered so many innocent people couldn’t manage to track down and eliminate one lone S.H.I.E.L.D. agent as he destroyed their bases and riddled their operatives with arrows on his way home. Or it could even be that, against all possible odds, they fought and scratched and killed until they could be together again, in each other’s arms.

It’s probably that last one.

There is no hesitation, not from the minute Clint breaches the perimeter of their safe house. She ignores Sam and Steve shouting to her to be careful, warning her that it could all be a trick, reminding her that Hydra has access to the same mask technology that S.H.I.E.L.D. once had. Because when the security cameras broadcast Clint’s image onto their surveillance screens she knows, just _knows_ , that it’s really him. No false face would make an impostor’s shoulders hunch the way Clint’s do when he is exhausted or force some impersonator to favor his left leg by the most infinitesimally small margin, since that old hamstring wound never totally healed. A Hydra agent pretending to be Clint wouldn’t know to instinctively crack his knuckles while contemplating a laser grid. 

And no one but Clint has ever made her heart race like this. So it is him, no doubt about it.

She doesn’t bother to mask her footfalls as she runs to the perimeter. So Clint whirls around, an arrow already loaded into his bow. It's clear that the last few months have taught him to take no chances and Natasha flinches but doesn't slow down. She couldn't even if she wanted to. And of course his bow falls to the ground, arrow and all, once sees who is speeding towards him. And then his arms close around her and she reaches up to press their mouths together and for the first time since some lackey pushed a button and broke the whole world, Natasha isn’t afraid.

They whisper words against each other’s skin as they undress, pulling sweaty dirty clothes away as they hunt for sweet skin. Natasha offers up endearments in Russian; a language that was used to command her, intimidate her and control her twists and changes as she bequeaths it to Clint in promises and confessions and pleas. She is only dimly aware of the words he pledges to her in exchange, the thanks to a God he used to tell her he wasn’t sure that he believed in, the exclamations of joy, of relief, of love.

She isn’t sure where he finds the restraint to stop himself before he pushes inside her, to cup her face in his hands, check her hungry eyes and ask if she’s okay. Ask if she’s sure. It is an American thing, she thinks, this separation of the thought and the deed. It doesn't matter that they haven't committed this particular physical act before; in so many other ways, they have been lovers for years. It's all their in the way their bodies fall into line in unison, the instinctive paths their hands map out on each other's skin. This is nothing new; it's just something old and precious getting bigger. So in response, she reaches down and grabs hold of his buttocks - strong human muscle, gloriously alive – and pushes him inside of her. 

Their twinned screams mingle in the night air.

“Why didn’t we do this years ago?” Clint asks, afterwards. They’re lying on the grass, which is damp and crushed beneath them and he’s tracing her tracing his body with his hands, looking for new damage and rejoicing in its absence. “We missed out on so much time.”

Natasha shakes her head and rolls so that he is under her, his hips between her thighs as she straddles him like a horse. She is an acknowledged master of regrets. She has spent her life atoning for what she did once she left the Red Room and her most recent months castigating herself for not seeing what was happening to S.H.I.E.L.D. as she went about her business obliviously. But she doesn’t want Clint to be tied up with regret in her mind. Not when he has always represented safety, refuge, possibilities, and hope.

And love. She can admit that to herself now, and acknowledge what she has always privately known. Clint is her love, and if admitting that is the only good thing that comes from this whole nightmarish situation then she will still cherish it as the gift that it is.

“We’re doing it now,” she says with a smile, bending down to kiss his forehead. She knows she doesn’t need to say what _it_ is, that she doesn’t just mean having sex. And she can tell Clint understands. It’s all there in the joy in his eyes, the brilliant, cocky grin that spreads across his face, the way he pulls her down for a real kiss. His fingers play with the tiny arrow charm that she never took off, not through all the fights and misery and lovemaking. His fingers slide, teasingly, over her breast and then come to rest on her heart. 

Just for that moment, it’s like there’s no danger out there beyond the safe house where they will live together. There are no pasts filled with violence and pain that they both regret and no war raging for the soul of S.H.I.E.L.D., or society, or the world as a whole. There is only Clint and Nastasha, two friends who have been in love for longer than they will ever be able to say. They are two people who are honest and happy and still have hours in front of them until the sun rises. And they are a tiny hope spot in a world full of darkness.

As Clint pushes inside her again, Natasha closes her eyes and, for once, allows herself to believe in it all.


End file.
